Page 3 of Iron Crown

The stranger looked like an undertaker. A very well-dressed one. My deluded, panicked mind wondered if he was Death himself, coming to take Giorgio’s soul. Or maybe I had died as well, and he was here to take me to the afterlife.

“My name is Andres Lutkus.” He pulled black medical gloves from his pocket and began putting them on. “We’re about to becomeverygood friends.”

Getting rid of a body is unscrupulously easy for those who know what they’re doing.

“Adieu Giorgio Morelli,” was all Andres said as we watched his body burn to ash at a crematorium that, according to him, was “owned by a friend.”

Some friend…

I lived in fear for days—fear of retaliation. From Giovanni Morelli, the number two man in the New York City Mafia, or even the police. In my nightmares, men in black uniforms swept down my darkened apartment until the red laser dots of their rifles converged right on my forehead. In a synchronized, thunderous moment, they’d shoot, killing me with the precision of a firing squad.

I’d wake up screaming.

Each day, Andres was there, knocking at the door with a bagel and coffee in hand. “You can’t stay in bed all day.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I would say, agitated, tired, and aching from the loss of my father. “You said that yesterday.”

Andres irritated me because I felt both safe, andunsafe, with him all at once. Each morning, he arrived and forced me to have breakfast with him. Then he left, on his merry way, leaving me to wallow under the covers, that bagel my only meal.

After a week, I finally said, “I killed someone.”

He didn’t even blink as he replied, “So?”

Thus began my long training with Andres “Blink” Lutkus. First, we talked about morality. Death. Killing. Organized Crime. Oppression.

My situation with my father. The bastards who made that a reality for thousands, if not millions, of heartbroken people each and every year.

Andres was a master at leading you to his conclusion, and after a while, I was a convert to his cause—a blind follower to the clandestine business of Paradigm. It seemednaturalthat I was in the woods of Mourningkill, at a hidden shooting range, buried in the woods of the Catskill Mountains. It all felt right. Like it was fate.

Pistol in hand, I tried to hit a target that popped up for less than two seconds. For what felt like the eighteenth time that sweltering afternoon, I missed, hitting dirt, as the target flattened out of view.

“I can't do this,” I said, with an exasperated sigh.

“Of course you can,” Blink whispered, kneading his temples with his long fingers. “You just need to find a way.”

“You want me to forge paintings and sell them to fund operations,” I said, feeling the weight of the 9mm Glock in my hand. “Not go all Jason Bourne on people.”

For days he had drilled me with weapons. How to break down a Dragonov, fire an assault rifle, and even how to 3D print a ghost gun. He’d used that to teach me the mechanics of the weapon, before taking me to the range and finding out what a terrible, terrible marksman I was.

The facility was what convinced me this was a bona fide operation. I suppose it could have been a sophisticated terrorist operation, but I was pretty sure that Al Qaeda didn’t hand out W-2s under Paradigm, LLC, with an office address in Delaware.

“When will I ever meet the real boss?” I asked, one day at the target range. We had moved from stationary targets to pop-up targets. He said the next step would be moving targets, then moving targets from a moving platform… All very insane shit.

“Never, if I can help it,” Blink said.

“Why not?”

“We keep people compartmentalized. In case any of us get caught, we can’t take the whole organization down with us.” Then he shrugged, his undertaker suit looking particularly grim today. “That, and Brett Bradley is an arsehole.”

“But you know who everyone is, don’t you?” Then I tilted my head, “And… Brett Bradley?”

“I do, darling, but I have a cyanide capsule in my tooth. My first choice is death.” Then he smirked. “Brett isn’t his real name—that’s his code name. Like Blink or Picasso.”

I gasped, my hand instinctively going back to my jaw, where my teeth were happily ensconced behind my cheek.

“Will I get one of those capsules?” I hoped not.

Killing Giorgio Morelli may have been an act of suicide, but I wasn’t actually suicidal.

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